This is long: Re: Boy Scouts, Family Life

[Eliza10]

You’re a single mom: boy scouting should be of greater interest to you and your situation than if you were married.

I’m a 43 year old guy who made Eagle Scout. At the time I got into scouting, I had just moved to a new town, didn’t have a lot of good friends. On top of this, my parents were constantly embattled, and the result of this was that my father really didn’t do a great deal of fathering with me. Scouting stepped into that gap…

Yes, I am looking for fatherly examples in his life and Dads hover around scouts, so there chances for men to be involved in his life. That is a definately a plus.

Spend the same time with scouts and you learn: cooking (and cleanup), camping and hiking (knots, knives, firemaking, ecology/environment, geography), and the list just goes on. Take a couple of minutes and look at all the different merit badges and their requirements: getting ahead in scouting will make your boy much more knowledgeable about the world around him than sports ever would!.

Yes, I do like the opportunity for him to learn things guys like. I suppose its the same way that I see sports - a kind of a guy language. Helping him to feel he has a place and an identity in the guy-world is important.

Just from reading your comments, it sounds like you might in the end just be put off by an awkward situation that was there. And what they say about “boy-run” stuff is true: this is how a kid becomes an adult, doing things like planning all the details for doing a campout, etc. I don’t mean to sound aggressive or mean or offensive, but you just may have gotten the wrong impression by this kind of parents meeting.

Its certainly is true, I may well have jumped to wrong conclusions about my impressions at that meeting. I will be looking closer as the opportunities arise to gain a truer sense of the meanings/implications of my impressions.

Thank you for your (name removed by moderator)ut!

 

[Maxply]

Eliza: re: who determines question. . .

I heartily, strongly and heartily again encouraged by sister to play tennis when she entered high school. She liked the sport, but didn’t feel should could do it, etc. But the loud voice I had made her go out for it, turned out she loved it, became co-captain her senior year, etc.

We often encounter new things which do not originally excite or interest us. You’re right that a good parent helps with a little steering here and there. I think in this day and age, we’re all pretty sensitive and alert to parents who overdo it: who push their kids. And the general public response is, “let the kid decide,” although the better part of wisdom is to find the middle place between hard pressure and do-nothing-ism.

Scouting is interesting in that there are places for many different kinds of boys. Some excel in outdoor cooking (which is a challenge), some in outdoorsmanship, some in swimming or canoeing. The troop I was in had a bus, and we were able to take weekend trips to hike different interesting places. . . places I wouldn’t otherwise been able to go to, in sum, doors opened that otherwise wouldn’t be opened.